What is Jen eating today?

For a while, I ran a series of photos on Facebook titled “What Jen is eating today.” That would be Jen the Squirrel (I named the squirrel Jen after one of my writer friends named the squirrel outside her window Debbie – though it had nothing to do with me). My office windows face fences, where squirrels spend a lot of time running back and forth, sometimes with food. Given that I work by myself all day and get distracted easily, I pay attention.

One day I saw the squirrel run by with half a piece of pizza (which I knew was not ours, as we eat all our pizza). Unfortunately I didn’t get the camera in time. But soon after I caught Jen on film munching on spiky balls from our trees (we have 12 full leaf bags full of these in the garage, and more litter the lawn). Then a banana. Lettuce. Some unknown grisly fat thing. Avocado peels.

Banana

I started recognizing some of the food, especially apple cores cut the way we cut them when we want to eat sliced apples. And then apple cores with shreds of paper that looked like they came from my shredding machine.

apple core and paper shreds

spiky ball

One particular spot is Jen’s favorite dining room table. It’s a gate post and it’s only two feet away from our compost bin.

I watched Jen one day as she (okay, so I have no clue actually of the squirrel’s gender) dove into our compost bin, as its lid no longer fits on properly. But later, Mark said the squirrels chewed a hole in side of the bin, so it actually doesn’t matter if the lid fits or not. They still have access.

going in

coming out

going back in

score!

I guess it’s still considered composting if the food is eaten by the squirrel and then tossed on the ground, right? And our compost food is healthier than pizza.

I’d like to thank my father for the nice digital camera which is now used to capture a squirrel eating 8 feet from my office window. I have to get in weird positions to take the pictures, as most of my shutters don’t open because there’s furniture in the way. And the screens on the lower half of the windows make for a bad view.